


Take This Sabbath Day

by akaparalian



Series: Policy 'Verse [2]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Developing Relationship, Fluff, Future Fic, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-11 23:24:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15982706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akaparalian/pseuds/akaparalian
Summary: For a moment, the morning feels just like every other bleary-eyed daybreak since his campaign for the Fuhrership began.And then Edward stirs beside him.





	Take This Sabbath Day

**Author's Note:**

> *shows up to 'verse two years late with Starbucks*
> 
> This is the sequel to [Proportional Response](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7624762), one of the fics I wrote for Roy/Ed week back in 2016 and have been intending to spin into a series ever since. There are about 6 wips in a folder in my Google drive in various stages of completion to that effect, but this is the first one that I've actually managed to finish, so... yay! This is a _very_ direct sequel -- as in, picks up the morning after the events of Proportional Response -- so I'd definitely suggest reading that one first.
> 
> If you're so inclined, come talk to me on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/akaparalian) or [Tumblr](http://floralegia.tumblr.com)! I also have a [Ko-Fi](http://ko-fi.com/akaparalian).

The wake-up call comes at a truly ungodly hour, but, alas, one which Roy’s body is reluctantly accustomed to. He fumbles his way to taking the receiver out of the cradle with fingers still shaky with sleep and listens to the polite voice of the lieutenant on the other side, who tells him the time and that Riza will be by in an hour to brief him for his day — his _first_ day — and then accompany him in to Central Command. He says, “Thank you,” on autopilot, puts the phone back in its receiver on the bedside table, and for a moment, the morning feels just like every other bleary-eyed daybreak since his campaign for the Fuhrership began.

And then Edward stirs beside him.

All at once, the things that haven’t quite had the chance to filter through the haze of his exhaustion to his waking mind slot into place. Last night — his inauguration, the ball, Ed. Ed in a tuxedo, a vision in white and black and gold, Ed smiling in the semidark of Roy’s office, Ed pressing 520 cenz into his palm and pressing a kiss to his mouth with equal confidence. And later, after, Ed staying pressed close against his side all night, neither of them willing to be parted, not now, not after everything. Ed coming home with him as though it were a foregone conclusion, but just changing into a pair of Roy’s pajamas, deliciously oversized in some places and pulled taut by muscle in others, and settling in to sleep, the warm weight of him against Roy’s side a revelation, an almost holy thing.

As Roy watches, he shifts in the dark, rolls over. They’d fallen asleep pressed together, but Ed had rolled away a bit in the night, evidently. For a moment, Roy considers turning on the bedside lamp just to get a better look at him, to prove to himself that this is real, that _Ed_ is real and really here and not far away in Drachma or Creta or Xing, reachable only by telegram. But he doesn’t want to disturb him — despite the stirring, Ed still seems mostly asleep, and even after all this time, Ed is still Ed; Roy certainly isn’t awake enough, or at least caffeinated enough, to risk waking him before the sun is even above the horizon and having to deal with the consequences — so he slips out of bed instead, reluctant but aware that it’s time to start his day.

He pads silently across the floor to the doorway that leads to the ensuite, though he allows himself the indulgence of pausing on the threshold to look back over his shoulder at the way the pre-dawn light, filtered through semi-sheer curtains, catches on the rumpled tangle of bedsheets on his side, and the lean line of Ed’s body under the covers on the other side. From here, Roy can just make out the jut of a cheekbone, the aureate spray of hair against the pillow.

It’s every dream he’s never even permitted himself to have, every private domestic fantasy he’s steadfastly ignored for the past several years. Roy turns and shuts the bathroom door behind him.

He stands in the pitch-dark of the room for a lingering moment before flicking a light on, wincing at the way the sudden brightness bounces off of marble and porcelain. He doesn’t bother looking in the mirror; he’s well aware that at the moment, he does not look his best. It was a long night, last night — a topper on the day he’s been waiting nearly half his life for, a whirlwind of genuinely unexpected emotions and the way Ed looks when he tips his head back to laugh, which is the opposite of unexpected, but also not something Roy thought he could ever have.

Good God. At least he’s getting all of this out on his own, without Edward around to read his mind, probably, and either laugh at him or do something much worse, like be tender right back. Maybe it’s just the early hour, but at the moment the thought of Edward Elric and tenderness makes Roy feel like he might shatter.

He pulls off his sleep clothes and turns on the shower by rote muscle memory, his thoughts and attention a million miles away or more. The sudden shock of the spray when he steps in makes him shiver; it’s warm, but even with the pleasant temperature it feels a bit like a hailstorm against his skin, startling him out of his thoughts for at least a moment.

As he washes, though, he can’t stop himself from wondering at the change. He’s had a front row seat to the way his own relationship with Ed has developed, obviously, so it should be impossible for him to be taken this much by surprise by it, but he feels as though he’s gone from watching it in real time, the shift so gradual that it doesn’t seem jarring, to looking at a time lapse. He considers the Edward Elric he had first met, heartbreakingly young and defiant and half stripped away by both his own hubris and his utterly selfless love; he considers the Ed who he had watched truly come into his own amidst conflict and blood and a supernaturally-charged coup d’etat, the Ed of the Promised Day, flush with new power but also with a mind that burned like lightning, determined and deadly and just on the cusp of greatness; he considers the man currently asleep in his bed, burrowed under his blankets, who is confident, brash, mature, painfully intelligent, stubborn, compassionate… and, if Roy is very lucky, willing to take a break from causing international incidents for at least a little while and see where the two of them might go.

Ed is a multitude, a host unto himself. The idea that he is — that he could be — in some way Roy’s is going to take much longer than one night to sink in.

They’ll need to have a discussion of terms, intent, aims. Maybe not yet, but they _will_. If Roy can’t stop himself from thinking tactically about this, then he at least comforts himself that he’s absentmindedly plotting the best way to convince Ed to stay in Amestris for the foreseeable future instead of rushing off again to a foreign land, rather than how this relationship — if it is or will be a relationship; the mere thought makes him flush with warmth — will affect him politically. At least the office hasn’t gotten its hooks into him in that particular way, he thinks, leaning forward to let the shower spray directly over his face.

He’s absolutely positive that Ed would — will — turn tail and run at the slightest hint that politics are entering into whatever this is between them, and he’s glad of it. It feels like insurance against a potential version of himself that he’s terrified of.

By the time he gets out of the shower, the mirror has fogged, and the tiles at least aren’t ice-cold under his feet anymore when he steps away from the bath mat. The absence of running water leaves absolute silence in its wake, no matter how hard he strains to hear, so he is left to assume for the time being that Ed is still asleep. He dries off a little mechanically, thoughts spinning away from him no matter how hard he tries to stop them. It’s just like Ed, isn’t it, to drop this kind of a bomb on him on the eve of an already monumental shift in his life — with Edward it never rains, nor even pours, but usually comes as a raging hurricane, Roy thinks wryly.

And that hurricane is just through the wall, curled up silent and still — and came here, to Amestris, all the way from Drachma, for him. Kissed him. Stayed right beside him all night.

Roy hopes he stays there much longer than just the one night.

He slips back out into the bedroom and over to his wardrobe, listening for the quiet rush of Ed’s breathing and smiling a tiny, private smile when he hears it. 

It feels strange not to reach for the uniforms that still hang neatly on one side of his enormous mahogany wardrobe. But this is public life: suits in slate, in black, in navy, all darker than the royal blue he’s worn for so long. It’s an intentional and carefully-considered act when he shrugs into a gunmetal gray jacket or when he reaches for a crimson tie, a decision he and his team have made about the image they want him to present.

He hesitates after he’s shut the wardrobe and crossed to the door that will lead him out into the hallway and down the stairs and into the crush of the day, hovering in place, taking one last pause to consider everything that’s changed in the past twenty-four hours. He looks at Ed once again, lets his eyes drift along the whole contour of his body under the covers, the implied dips and grooves softened by several layers of fabric. When he paces quickly back across the floor, it’s an automatic action; he doesn’t even fully realize why he’s doing it until he’s already bending down to brush his lips lightly across Ed’s forehead, a barely-there kiss that feels at least a little bit like the proper “good morning” he won’t be able to give. Then he thinks about it for a second longer and crosses quietly over to his desk, grabbing for the first piece of paper he sees and hoping that his scrawl in the mostly-dark of the room is legible at all.

The note is folded in half and left on the nightstand at Ed’s side of the bed, and then he really is out the door and down the hall and off into the semi-unknown, with only the briefest moment remaining before his whole day starts to go and go and doesn’t stop to wonder if it’s really possible that he’s gotten this lucky.

—

Ed wakes slowly and luxuriously, on a bed that feels like a cloud. This is unsettling — not enough to shock him out of sleep, but enough that, once he’s more or less awake, his brow knits into a frown before he’s even opened his eyes.

As soon as he _does_ open his eyes, blinking muzzily into weak mid-morning sunlight partially blocked by gauzy curtains, he’s no longer unsettled. (Well. No longer unsettled by the thought that he’s waking up somewhere unfamiliar, anyway.) They’d gotten back to Roy’s townhouse awfully late last night, after the ball finally ended, but not late enough that he’d been too deeply tired then to recognize the room now, even though Roy himself is nowhere to be found.

Which makes sense, he thinks, sitting up slowly and stretching. (Shit. Even on a super-comfy bed, he’s a little sore. Drachma was hard on him, though hopefully it’s nothing that won’t fix itself with time and rest.) Roy’s probably been at work since the crack of dawn, which Ed pictures with no small amount of fondness: Roy shuffling bleary-eyed through the house but showing up to the office bright-eyed and commanding, taking up the mantle he was practically born for.

Shit. He kind of wishes he’d been awake in time to witness at least some of that.

He looks around the room in search of a clock and finds a note on the nightstand instead. It’s folded over, with his name on it in a hand he easily recognizes, though it’s messier than normal. Effects of writing while half-asleep, maybe? The thought brings a small smile to his face as he reaches for the paper and flips it open.

_Edward,_

_I thought it was probably wisest not to wake you — I’ve heard enough horror stories from Alphonse to know better._

_I’m deeply glad you could make it to the inauguration, and I hope you will stay in Central at least until tonight before darting off to a foreign land to cause political intrigue. I’d very much like to take you to dinner. I think it’s high time._

The way it’s signed makes Ed’s head spin:

_Your Roy._

Well, fuck. He very briefly tries to convince himself not to overthink that and very aggressively fails. He shivers, tracing the pad of one finger over the letters: the swoop of the ‘R,’ the tight coil of the ‘y.’ ‘Your Roy.’ _His_ Roy. It’s zero to sixty so fast that he feels his heart pounding in his ears.

But, God, okay. There’s nothing he can do right now, he tells himself firmly. Roy won’t be home until the evening — likely quite late, even. And much as part of him likes the idea of lounging in Roy’s bed all day, wearing his clothes (and a certain specific part of him likes that idea _very_ much), he’s relatively sure that in reality, he’d be bored of that within the hour. He supposes he could probably raid Roy’s library to solve that problem — no doubt that the bastard has probably managed to pick up some interesting and impossible-to-find new things since the last time Ed was here — but there are other factors, too. Namely: Al is probably wondering if he’s died in a ditch or something, seeing as Ed didn’t exactly warn his brother that he wouldn’t be coming home last night.

He makes his so-called “walk of shame” with a distinct amount of pride. Al and May’s apartment isn’t too far from Roy’s place, and the crisp weather means that he can hide his rumpled tux — all he’d had to change into, though he’d heavily considered leaving it and stealing something of Roy’s to wear instead — under his coat. The note sits in his breast pocket, and he’d swear at gunpoint that he can feel it there like an ember burning steadily against his chest.

Thank God he has a key, because Al and May both have real, adult-type jobs of the nine-to-five variety, and thus aren’t home to let him in at half-past ten in the morning. His suitcase is still propped up against the end of the couch, exactly where he’d dropped it last night before rushing off to the inauguration. The apartment — a charming little place, smaller than a lot of the government bigwig townhouses in this neighborhood, done up in a blend of traditional, almost rustic Amestrian stylings and much more rich and lavish imperial Xingese decor that seems like it shouldn’t work, but somehow does — is quiet and empty around him as he digs through his case for something a little less creased and a lot less formal to change into.

Ed very carefully takes the note out of his pocket before he changes, setting it on the arm of the couch. It’s stupid — it’s _so_ stupid, he clearly got cabin fever in Drachma or something and now he’s lost it completely — but he feels like every word of it is burned into the back of his eyelids, but especially… well, especially the signature.

He flops back onto the couch, grabbing the note as he goes and flipping it open without thinking about it. _I’d very much like to take you to dinner. I think it’s high time. Your Roy._

Well. That really lays it all out on the table, doesn’t it? Not that Ed hadn’t been the one to throw down the initial gauntlet, because he totally had. And… he’s wanted this for a while. For longer than he’s willing to admit, really, across national borders and all throughout the wide range of situations he’s found his way into in the decade-and-change since the Promised Day.

And Roy seems interested — not just casually receptive, which is what Ed might have hoped for a couple of years ago (back before all of this election nonsense, before working together to plan Roy’s campaign, before Ed’s latest self-imposed exile), but really _serious_ about this. Which is a relief, obviously, because _Ed_ is serious about it. And, he thinks, tracing over ‘Your Roy’ _again_ because he’s alone and there’s no one here to judge him for it and he’s earned it, damn it, it means he hasn’t read things wrong between them in this new phase of their lives, so that’s obviously good.

Still, though. It’s a pretty big transition from thinking of Roy in the twisting streets of Creta and the frigid Drachman backwoods, doing anything necessary to get the news from Amestris in an attempt to track his public career and jumping on any mention of him in letters from Al in an attempt to keep up with his personal life without actually speaking to _him_ about it, to… to actually _doing_ this. Whatever it is, exactly, that they’re doing. 

He doesn’t regret making the first move, not one tiny bit, but he’s also pretty sure that he’s well within his rights to quietly freak out about it in the solitude of the Elric-Chengs’ living room, that’s all.

Ed taps his finger over ‘I think it’s high time’ and feels his lips twist into a tiny smirk. Yes, he decides, it certainly is. God — the idea of how far they’ve come is mind-blowing. And the idea that he, somehow, gets the chance to stand at Roy’s side now, at the cusp of everything he’s been working for so long to achieve, everything Ed and dozens of dozens of others have _helped_ him to achieve… that’s what makes him sit up on the couch and wonder if Al has the number for Roy’s personal line written down anywhere.

He doesn’t, but that just means that he gets to learn that the Central Command switchboard has been authorized to put him through to Roy’s office at any time, no question — knowledge that settles warm and satisfying in his mind.

A hold tone plays for just a moment before Roy’s voice is on the other end of the line, familiar and fond and just a little smokey. “Edward.”

Has he interrupted something important? Is Roy going to tell him about it later? Is he going to get to spend his time — any amount of time — at Roy’s side, listening to him and being heard in return, right there with the man whose vision of this country he’s been committed to for a monumental portion of his life and knowing that Roy counts him as important enough, puts enough stock in him, to answer the phone no matter what’s going on?

Oh, and, also, does Roy have any ideas about where to go for their date tonight?

“So,” Ed says, unable to quite tamp down on the grin that’s spreading wider and wider over his face, “About dinner tonight. I am _sick to death_ of Drachman food, but if there are any good new Xingese places that have cropped up since I’ve been gone, I’m all ears…”


End file.
